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A CurtainUp London London Review
The Same Deep Water As Me


"We find 'em, we follow 'em, we prang 'em." — Kevin
The Same Deep Water As Me
Foreground Marc Wootton as Kevin Needleman and to the rear Daniels Mays as Andrew Eagleman (Photo: Johan Persson)
Nick Payne's new comedy looks at firms who specialise in chasing up claims for negligence after an accident under the "no win, no fee" arrangements. Until the law changed in 2013, restricting the claimants' costs being awarded separately from the damages claim but instead being paid out of the damages awarded, there was a free market for unscrupulous quasi-legal firms to charge huge amounts for managing a claim. An illegal industry grew up in people claiming subjective painful injuries.

Kevin (Marc Wootton) and Andrew (Daniel Mays) know each other from School. Andrew is in partnership with the respectable Barry Patterson (Nigel Lindsay), a firm called Scorpion Claims, "Luton's finest personal injuries lawyers". Kevin is short of money and with a baby on the way, he is claiming for an accident that he wasn't involved in with passengers who weren't there.

Much of The Same Deep Water As Me is quick fire comedy with great one-liners based around these low lives planning a white collar crime in a seedy office where the more honest Barry offers clients exotic herbal and green teas and everyone nips over to Greggs, a cheap bakery chain. The first act is a succession of their client base and the second set in the court room where the supermarket owned van driver challenges the claimant's version of events with their own ball-breaking solicitor, Georgina (the wonderful Monica Dolan).

Daniel Mays has a face made for comedy when Andrew's dodgy friend, Kevin, lands him in deeper and deeper water. What starts for Andrew as a small lie spirals into major fraud and on a large scale. Marc Wootton makes your flesh creep as Kevin the scamster. The characterisations in Nick Payne's comedy are plausible and the performances John Crowley gets from his cast, superb. In the first act Monica is a tale telling taxi driver in the "You'll never guess who I had in the back of my cab . . ." mould, and unrecognisable in the second, as the slick suited lawyer. "With a veritable smorgasbord of head and neck injuries", she says implying the pick and choose nature of the claim. What is less believable is that any judge would not see straight through Kevin's implausible lies. We do enjoy the judge (Peter Forbes) going apeshit, not at the lies he's been told, but when he catches Kevin texting on his mobile phone in court. This illustrates a judicial system not delivering justice.

Scott Pask's office set is full of cluttered detritus and the rif about the fan that doesn't work makes a journey to the court room to cool off the judge, where it perfectly cools him alone.

Expectations are high from Nick Payne whose play Constellations won some of last year's Best New Play awards, but The Same Deep Water As Me is like a pilot for a television series with his marvellous ear for dialogue rather than fine plot construction. However, well done to Nick Payne for exposing and putting centre stage the fake accident industry which has put hundreds of pounds on our car insurance premiums.

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The Same Deep Water As Me
Written by Nick Payne
Directed by John Crowley

Starring: Daniel Mays, Nigel Lindsay, Monica Dolan, Marc Wootton
With: Peter Forbes, Joanna Griffin, Niky Wardley, Isabella Laughland
Designed by Scott Pask
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Christopher Shutt
Running time: Two hours 5 minutes with one interval
Box Office: 0844 871 7624
Booking to 28th September 2013
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 6th August 2013 performance at the Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LX (Tube: Covent Garden)

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